princess. But the high authority conceded to the Emperor is also conceded to great men, so that in
some dreams, for example, Goethe appears as a father symbol (Hitschmann).- All elongated objects,
sticks, tree-trunks, umbrellas (on account of the opening, which might be likened to an erection), all
sharp and elongated weapons, knives, daggers, and pikes, represent the male member. A frequent,
but not very intelligible symbol for the same is a nail-file (a reference to rubbing and scraping?).- Small
boxes, chests, cupboards, and ovens correspond to the female organ; also cavities, ships, and all kinds
of vessels.- A room in a dream generally represents a woman; the description of its various entrances
and exits is scarcely calculated to make us doubt this interpretation. *(2) The interest as to whether the
room is open or locked will be readily understood in this connection. (Cf. Dora's dream in Fragment of
an Analysis of Hysteria.) There is no need to be explicit as to the sort of key that will unlock the room; the
symbolism of lock and key has been gracefully if broadly employed by Uhland in his song of the Graf
Eberstein.- The dream of walking through a suite of rooms signifies a brothel or a harem. But, as H.
Sachs has shown by an admirable example, it is also employed to represent marriage (contrast). An
interesting relation to the sexual investigations of childhood emerges when the dreamer dreams of two
rooms which were previously one, or finds that a familiar room in a house of which he dreams has been
divided into two, or the reverse. In childhood the female genitals and anus (the "behind") *(3) are conceived
of as a single opening according to the infantile cloaca theory, and only later is it discovered that this
region of the body contains two separate cavities and openings. Steep inclines, ladders and stairs, and
going up or down them, are symbolic representations of the sexual act. *(4) Smooth walls over which
one climbs, facades of houses, across which one lets oneself down- often with a sense of great anxiety-
correspond to erect human bodies, and probably repeat in our dreams childish memories of climbing
up parents or nurses. Smooth walls are men; in anxiety dreams one often holds firmly to projections on
houses. Tables, whether bare or covered, and boards, are women, perhaps by virtue of contrast, since
they have no protruding contours. Wood generally speaking, seems, in accordance with its linguistic
relations, to represent feminine matter (Materie). The name of the island Madeira means wood in Portuguese.
Since bed and board (mensa et thorus) constitute marriage, in dreams the latter is often substituted for
the former, and as far as practicable the sexual representation-complex is transposed to the eating-
complex.- Of articles of dress, a woman's hat may very often be interpreted with certainty as the male
genitals. In the dreams of men, one often finds the necktie as a symbol for the penis; this is not only
because neckties hang down in front of the body, and are characteristic of men, but also because one
can select them at pleasure, a freedom which nature prohibits as regards the original of the symbol.
Persons who make use of this symbol in dreams are very extravagant in the matter of ties, and possess
whole collections of them. *(5) All complicated machines and appliances are very probably the genitals-
as a rule the male genitals- in the description of which the symbolism of dreams is as indefatigable as
human wit. It is quite unmistakable that all weapons and tools are used as symbols for the male organ: e.g.,
ploughshare, hammer, gun, revolver, dagger, sword, etc. Again, many of the landscapes seen in dreams,
especially those that contain bridges or wooded mountains, may be readily recognized as descriptions
of the genitals. Marcinowski collected a series of examples in which the dreamer explained his dream
by means of drawings, in order to represent the landscapes and places appearing in it. These drawings
clearly showed the distinction between the manifest and the latent meaning of the dream. Whereas,
naively regarded, they seemed to represent plans, maps, and so forth, closer investigation showed that
they were representations of the human body, of the genitals, etc., and only after conceiving them thus
could the dream be understood. *(6) Finally, where one finds incomprehensible neologisms one may
suspect combinations of components having a sexual significance.- Children, too, often signify the genitals,
since men and women are in the habit of fondly referring to their genital organs as little man, little woman,
little thing. The little brother was correctly recognized by Stekel as the penis. To play with or to beat a
little child is often the dream's representation of masturbation. The dream-work represents castration by
baldness, hair-cutting, the loss of teeth, and beheading. As an insurance against castration, the dream
uses one of the common symbols of the penis in double or multiple form and the appearance in a dream
of a lizard- an animal whose tail, if pulled off, is regenerated by a new growth- has the same meaning.
Most of those animals which are utilized as genital symbols in mythology and folklore play this part also
in dreams: the fish, the snail, the cat, the mouse (on account of the hairiness of the genitals), but above
all the snake, which is the most important symbol of the male member. Small animals and vermin are